National Arts Council, Skal Club partner for tourism development

The National Council for Arts and Culture has cemented a pact with Scal Club International; an organization that promotes global tourism and friendship, to harness the huge tourism potentials in Nigeria for the global market.

The agreement was reached when the Director-General of National Council for Arts and Culture, Segun Runsewe received a delegation from Scal Club International, in his office in Abuja.

Runsewe, while thanking the delegation for the visit, said;

“Nigeria with enormous tourism potentials and is home to about 250 ethnic groups and 500 distinct languages, endowed with a plethora of historical sites, monuments, and richly diverse cultural heritages, is a tourist haven.

“In spite of the huge potentials, tourism as an alternative source of revenue to crude oil has been neglected for many years owing to the country’s heavy reliance on the mono product. In many other countries culture and tourism is the main stay of their economy”.

The Director-General revealed that the benefits to Nigeria’s tourism sector would be enormous if its tourism potentials is well harnessed and marketed as a veritable tourist destination.

“The value chain of Nigeria’s tourism potentials range from the hospitality sector to aviation and transportation, destination management, souvenir production, event packaging, carnivals, festivals and cultural promotions, among others and the opportunities of leveraging this key growth sector to create jobs and add to the nation’s GDP are limitless as no one is a failure in the sector,” he said.

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Otunba Runsewe, who doubles as the President of World Crafts Council for African Region, opined that the platform created by Skal International will help in marketing Nigeria’s unique cultural heritage, vibrant traditions and warm hospitality to the world and also create a distinct and compelling brand identity through collaborative marketing campaigns, both domestically and internationally.

The head of the delegation and president of the organisation, Mr. Daisi Olotu said the group was at the culture house to identify with Otunba Runsewe who has remained a constant phenomenon in the Tourism, Arts and Culture spaces in Nigeria.

“The group is proud to be associated with Nigeria’s favourite Culture and Tourism ambassador whose passion and drive on his job in this sector is evidently unrivalled,” he said.

The visit also featured an interactive session where the visitors bore their minds on sundry challenges militating against their official tasks and ways to overcome them.